Hideo Furukawa

Authors

Hideo Furukawa
古川日出男

Hideo Furukawa(1966–) is hailed by many in Japan’s literary world as a prodigy worthy of inheriting the mantle of Haruki Murakami. While Furukawa has produced an homage to Murakami in the form of a remix of Chūgoku yuki no surō bōto (Slow Boat to China), and acknowledges him (along with Gabriel García Márquez) as one of his biggest influences, the two authors' approaches are in fact quite different. Furukawa is as highly regarded for the richness of his storytelling as for his willingness to experiment; chameleon-like, he changes style with every new book. His first published work, 13 (1998), made bold use of magical realism; his fourth book, Arabia no yoru no shuzoku (The Arabian Nightbreeds), established his career. His best-known novel is the 2008 Seikazoku (Holy Family), an epic work of alternate history set in northeastern Japan, where he was born. His 2011 Umatachi yo, soredemo hikari wa muku de (Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure: A Tale That Begins with Fukushima, tr. 2016), written after Furukawa visited the area devastated by the earthquake and tsunami of 2011, is considered a sequel. In 2015 he received the Noma Prize for New Writers for Onna-tachi sanbyaku-nin no uragiri no sho (The Book of 300 Treacherous Women), based on the classic Tale of Genji (ca. 1011).

This is an extraordinary book, ambitious and ingeniously crafted?and a winner of top literary awards in both mystery and science-fiction categories. Author Hideo Furukawa states at the outset that the work is not his; instead he claims to be translating a …

Set in the Shinagawa and Gotanda districts in south central Tokyo, this book tracks the lives of a cast of young people from fall 2004 to summer 2005. Author Hideo Furukawa describes the work as "one gigantic short story."
A young woman, rejected in love …

Hideo Furukawa adapted Kenji Miyazawa’s Ginga tetsudō no yoru (Night on the Milky Way Train)?considered by many to be Japan’s greatest children’s classic?into a reading play, which over the course of numerous performances evolved into the form set …

The Tale of Genji, written just over a thousand years ago, has been called the world’s “oldest modern novel.” The work is attributed to Murasaki Shikibu (or Lady Murasaki), a noblewoman from the late 10th to early 11th century who was lady-in-waitin …